Friday, May 29, 2015

Marriage is the most convincing explanation of the Mystery of the
Trinity.

I read a confession of a man, who get married:

I understood a little bit from the Mystery of the Holy Trinity when I
get married. I love my wife, my wife loves me, and the personification of this
mutual love is our child. I understood that God is like that, God is a Mutual
Creative Love. I understood that He created us as a unity of creative lave, I
understood that love is always directed toward two other persons, that love is
always creative. I understood the homosexuals unions a empty of love because
they cannot and they will never be creative, I understood the God can not be
alone that He has to be a community of persons, and he created us as a
community of persons.

The story is told of a priest sitting in an airport waiting for his
flight. A fellow killing time struck up a conversation. Said he, "Father,
I believe only what I can understand. So, I can't buy your Trinity. Perhaps you
can explain it to me." The priest reluctantly put down The New York Times.
"Do you see the sun out there?" "Yup." "OK, it's 80
million miles away from us right now. The rays coming through the window,"
said the priest, "are coming from the sun. The delightful heat we are
enjoying on our bodies right now come from a combination of the sun and its
rays. Do you understand that?" The fellow answered,
"Sure, padre." "The Trinity," the priest went on,
"is like that. God the Father is that blazing sun. The Son is the rays He
sends down to us. Then both combine to send us the Holy Spirit who is the heat.
If you understand the workings of the sun, its rays, and heat, why do you have
difficulty believing the Trinity?" The man said something about catching a
flight and was off.

The priest, a physics professor, picked up the Times with a broad smile.
He doubted whether his recent guest understood the workings of the sun. He knew
no one would ever comprehend the mystery of the Trinity this side of the grave.
After all, why does God have to tell us everything? In his experience, He
tells us only on a need to know basis.

His favourite line from the Book of Job popped into his mind. "Can
anyone penetrate the deep designs of God?" (11:7) As a scientist and a
Catholic, he knew the answer to that question. Try to understand the Trinity
and you become like a person staring, as someone said, into the noonday sun to
better understand it.

Finally he put down the Times and recalled fondly his late Dogma
professor in the seminary. When he came to the section on the Trinity in the
textbook, he turned the pages quickly. The Dogma prof said, "Professor
Thomas Aquinas, late of the University of Paris and the Albert Einstein of
his day, didn't understand the Trinity. So, it is most unlikely that you blockheads
will either. Just remember St Paul mentions the Trinity 30 times in his
letters. Take it on faith and you'll muddle through somehow." He trusted
that the professor and Thomas both now understood the Trinity perfectly.

He himself never had difficulty buying into a God who is passionately in
love with us, a Son who was willing to die for us, and a Holy Spirit whose job
it is to help us become saints like Thomas of Aquin and Paris.

He recalled the husband, who said when he became a
father, he better understood the Trinity. When he and his wife had their son,
they had evidence of their love for each other. There was the lover, the
beloved, and the love, each distinct and yet one.

Belief in the Trinity demands acknowledging God’s infinite superiority
in all areas including our rationality. Adam and Eve refused to do
that. They pushed God aside, turned away from life and gave us
death. The Arians, including the modern day arians of the academia, do
not have the humility to admit that man’s knowledge of the Divine is limited by
the finite capability of the human mind. They do not have the humility to enter
into mystery, the mystery of God. I like to consider it this way: an
eight year old cannot understand calculus. He or she is incapable of that
form of understanding. But calculus still exists. Most of our top
high school students could not come to the theory of relativity, but it is a
valid theory. Because some knowledge is beyond us does not mean that it
doesn’t exist. What does exist is the pride and arrogance we all have to
refuse to go beyond the limits of our minds and accept God’s mysteries. The
trouble is that we humans are proud. We would like to determine who God
is, what He should be like, etc. We try to fit him into our mental constructs.
In doing so, we are refusing to enter into mystery.

Dom Julian, a Benedictine monk, wrote, “All that matters is that God is
God, and I, I am only I.”

Jesus didn’t explicitly teach us about the Trinity. The theology of the
Trinity comes out of the reflection of the early Church on the teaching of
Jesus. They thought over what he said and under the influence of the Holy
Spirit they began to understand the dynamics of the Trinity.

Jesus referred on many occasions to his Father and the closeness of his
relationship with him. Moreover he taught us to speak to the Father in a very
familiar and direct way.

Jesus also promises to send us his Spirit and refers even in this
particular passage that he will be with us always, until the end of time. We
understand that it is precisely through the Holy Spirit that Jesus is present
to us.

Thursday, May 28, 2015

Collapse of f Western Catholicism is not caused exclusively by the transformation of secular civilization, that is, the growth of wealth, prosperity and pride amongst its people but, unfortunately, also by weak and non-specific pastoral care and guidance. Far too many priests took the easy way out; they all but abandoned the confessionals, abused the liturgy, and became lost in sterile discussions, social gatherings, and unproductive meetings over coffee. In seeking refuge in politically correct actions, nothing remained clear, especially to the laity.

The current situation may, indeed, be the moment just before the "last extinguishes the light." The situation is frightful and dramatic...

Moreover, despite the fact that many people are aware of this situation and many also perceive the risks involved, it seems that most of them pretend not to see, do not want to see or are blind to the consequences! There are also a lot of those who, because of a desire to conform and a fear of losing their positions and privileges remain indifferent and inert, keeping mute and taking no action.

Those who do see the problems and try only to bring them forward and into the light so as to have an honest exchange and dialogue about them, are viewed as fatalists, fanatics, pessimists, and negativistic.

Similarly, when Jesus spoke of the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, nobody wanted to listen to Him. Was He, too, a fatalist, a fanatic and a pessimist, focusing on the negative and “doom and gloom”?

Irish supporters wrote us after the referendum, telling us the bishops were in shock, that they had no idea their flock were so far gone, and they are now left looking on the crumbling ruins of the Faith they've been called to teach and defend. They speculate the vote was not so much a vote the Church, a deliberate slap in the face of an institution the Irish have come to resent and even hate.

Saturday, May 23, 2015

The story is told of Napoleon Bonaparte boasting to a Vatican
cardinal that he would destroy the Church. The cardinal insouciantly replied to
the perplexed emperor, "Good luck, Your Majesty. We, priests have been
attempting to do just that for centuries."

In effect, the bishop was doffing his scarlet biretta in
salute to the Holy Spirit. That Spirit dwells comfortably and sometimes, I
suspect, very uncomfortably within the Church. Try what anyone might; the
Church will not go away precisely because the Third Person of the Holy Trinity
is on the job around the clock. Napoleon thought the prelate was pulling his
imperial leg. He took on the Church. He was rudely dethroned. The
Church survived. The former emperor wound up beating off mosquitoes as a
full-time occupation on the damp island of Saint Helena somewhere in the
Atlantic Ocean.

Without the Holy Spirit, the Church would be, at best, a
third rate operation or, perhaps better, a non-operation. But with the Spirit,
the Church is today able to survive its many difficulties.

With the Holy Spirit the Church survived the centuries of
persecution, the attempts of Napoleon and French Revolution, the efforts of the
Mexican and Spain’s revolutions, the communistic domination in Russia and East
European countries. With the Holy Spirit at work the church survived the
diabolic attempts during the Second World War, and is still surviving the
most atrocious persecutions in Communistic China. The Holy Spirit is at work in
the Lord’s Church, but He is also, or at least should be, at work in us.

A brilliant man, a man of education, with Doctorate Degrees
and honors from most major universities, took a sabbatical. He decided to
devote as much time as it would take, one year, two years or more, and learn
all he could about Jesus. He studied ancient Greek and ancient Hebrew and
Aramaic so he could read the earliest texts about Jesus. He studied
Ignatius, Justin, Augustine, Aquinas, and all the famous theologians of past
centuries, always focusing on learning about Jesus. He read the works of
modern theologians. He took courses in various foreign languages so he
could understand theologians in their original language.

After studying and studying he wrote his own book about
Jesus. It was an instant- success, not just in the academic circles, but
in every Christian and even non-Christian Church. The man, the esteemed
professor, was called upon to give talks about Jesus to all sorts of different
groups, from seminarians to atheists. His lectures always ended with a question
and answer period. Usually, there was no one in the audience who could
ask a question that the brilliant man had not been asked before or for which
he did not have an answer at the tip of his tongue.

No one, until an elderly man raised his hand after one
lecture. The old man asked: “How is it that someone who has studied as
much as you, has learned so little?”

What? What type of an arrogant simpleton would dare
question the great scholar, the great professor? After the commotion
settled down, the scholar responded, “I am sure that I have much more to learn
about Jesus, but why do you feel that I have learned so little?” He had the old
man. At least until the man said, “You have Jesus in your head, but you
do not have him in your heart.”

Knowledge of Christ comes from the head, but knowing Christ
comes from the heart. His Spirit must be within us. We have to give
Him permission to work in us, to operate in our hearts. Otherwise we will
not know our Lord and Redeemer.

And this is the great gift of Pentecost, the solemnity we
celebrate today. The Spirit of the Lord has been given to us so that we don’t just know about the
Lord, but that we know the Lord.

Friday, May 15, 2015

Today we celebrate Christ's ascension. Let this be clear - there was something very new and wonderful
when Jesus returned to His heavenly Father. The Second Person of the Blessed
Trinity left heaven to take on a human body born of the Virgin Mary and was
named Jesus. The Second Person of the Blessed Trinity remained in heaven as a
member of the Holy Trinity but He also began to live on earth as Jesus, true
God and true man. When Jesus ascended into heaven, He, as the Second Person of
the Holy Trinity, came with His glorified body, the body that hung on the
cross, was buried and rose from the dead. He came with His five wounds that
would forever serve as trophies of His victory over sin and death. This feast then celebrates Christ's final
departure from earth and also His exalted position seated at God's right hand.
In the Apostles Creed we pray, "He ascended into heaven and is seated at
the right hand of the Father."

In that Creed we
acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the Son Of God and that He came to earth being
born of the Virgin Mary. He is both
Divine and Human. We acknowledge that He is our Lord and Saviour. What we must
keep in mind, however, is that Jesus is active in this position. The very fact
that He appeared to the apostles over the span of forty days shows this.

While on earth Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit AFTER He had
ascended to His Father. This He did after the Ascension. He promised to prepare
a place for the apostles so that where He was they would eventually be. He "always lives to make
intercession" for "those who draw near to God through Him." He
is the one mediator between God and man. Finally Jesus also promised to be with
His Church to the end of time . We believe everything that the Scriptures tell
us about Him and everything that the Scriptures tell us that He said and did. This
is what makes us Catholic Christians and we proudly proclaim the same – meaning
every word that we say. It is important therefore that we know what we are saying and
we understand what we are saying in the Creed because to be a Chris­tian is to
acknowledge that Jesus is Lord and Saviour, but to be a Catholic Christian is
also to acknowledge that the Catholic Church is the one true Church that Jesus
established.

Now my purpose here is not to play
the Catholic Church against all other Christian denominations but rather to
present to you the argument that to deny the authority of the one Church that
Jesus Christ established is to deny the authority of the one who established
her – the one who is head of His body
the church. And not only deny Jesus’ authority but ultimately His
divinity also.

If we deny that the Church has full
authority to teach the truth and that all she teaches is the truth – or if we
dissent from the teaching of the truth or from the Church’s authority – then
ultimately what we are denying is the Divinity of Christ Himself. For as St. Paul says in today’s reading Christ
is the Head of His body the Church and He promises to remain with her and
protect her until the end of the age. As Catholics we fully accept and
understand the fact that Jesus is Divine and that if He is the Son of God as we
so proudly proclaim Him to be then we must also acknowledge that He has divine
power - to safeguard His One True Church He clearly intended to establish and
be with until the end of time.

But safeguard the Church from what and for
what?

From the New Testament
we learn that Jesus gave special and highly significant emphasis to the word
"truth." He tells Pilate that He
has come to bear witness to the truth (John 18:37), and He tells His disciples
that they will know the truth and the truth will set them free (John 8:32).

On the night of His betrayal He tells His
disciples that He will send them the Spirit of Truth who will teach them
"all things " remind them of all Jesus has told them (John 14:26) and
guide them "into all the truth" (John 16:13). Note that little word
"all," repeated three times. Then, in His prayer to His Father, Jesus
asks that His disciples be sanctified (made holy) and consecrated (set apart)
in the truth. Not in goodness or virtue or love, but in the truth.

The truth matters so
much to Jesus that He calls Himself - the Truth. “I am the Way, the Truth and
the Life”. In His meeting with the Samaritan woman, He says that His Father
seeks "true worshippers" who will worship Him "in spirit and in
truth". Not only that, but He calls the devil not the Father of Sin or of
Wickedness, but the Father of Lies. To drive the point home Jesus says that
Satan "has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him" (John 8:44).

So if the truth is as important as Jesus says it
is, and the enemy is not some amateur liar but the very Father of lies, then
the battle-lines are clearly drawn and the only question remaining is: does
Jesus have what it takes to protect His Church from this enemy?

Scripture gives us two images of the Church that
are especially pertinent here. Whether we see the Church as the Bride of Christ
and Jesus as the Bridegroom (Eph. 5:25, Rev. 21: 2) (Matt. 9:15) or as the
sheepfold and Jesus as the Good Shepherd (John 10:11), His role as protector is
paramount. His defense of His Bride, His defense of His flock is not abstract
or theoretical; it is intensely personal, because the Father of Lies is a real
and deadly enemy, whose chief weapon is
falsehood.

Jesus takes this threat
to His Church personally.

And in His prayer to the
Father on the night of His betray­al, right after asking that His disciples be
"kept from the evil one"- that is, protected from the Father of Lies
- He gives the means by which this protection will be instituted: they are to
be sanctified in the truth. So
Jesus tells us who the enemy is, and what He as Bridegroom will do to safeguard
his Bride: He will send the Holy Spirit of Truth, the one who sanctifies us in
the truth. Nowhere does Jesus promise us a Church without sinners or dissenters
- on the contrary, as He teaches us in the parable of the wheat and tares – The
farmer lets the weeds grow up with the wheat because uprooting the weeds might
damage some of the wheat.

The farmer waits until
harvest time. Then He will separate the wheat from the weeds, the obedient from
the disobedient, and gather the wheat into His barn and then He will cast the
weeds into the fire. Jesus promises us a Church which will be without lies, a
church guided by the Spirit of Truth. St. Paul must have understood our Lord
well, since He refers to the Church as the "pillar and foundation of the
truth" (1 Tim. 3:15). Where could he have gotten such a notion except from
the one who promised to send the Holy Spirit of Truth?

If we accept the
divinity of Christ then we accept His divine capacity to personally defend,
protect and preserve His Church from the enemy. If He cannot do that, then He
may be a shepherd, but certainly not a divine one; a bridegroom, but only
human. If He cannot keep His flock safe from falsehood, then that means the
Father of Lies wins and Jesus, whoever He is, is not the Lord. But we believe and we proudly profess together
that because Christ is the Divine
Bridegroom and the Divine Shep­herd, the Catholic Church is exactly what she
claims to be and who Sacred Scripture tells us that she is: Christ's beloved
Bride, His cherished flock, protected by the Spirit of Truth and therefore
infallible in matters of faith and mor­als. If the Church is not infallible,
Jesus is not God, and the Holy Spirit is not the Spirit of Truth.

Jesus, as Lord, is also
the Lord of History.

Why is this? Well, Jesus
promised to be with his Church until the end (Matt. 28:20) and so His divine
shepherding takes place in time, as history unfolds. The Father of Lies is and
will be a constant threat until the end, until Jesus returns in glory. Now how
can Jesus be the Lord of History if the Church did not have the truth from the
very beginning ? How can Jesus be the Lord of History if the Church did not
have the truth until Luther came along 1500 years later, or Zwingli or Calvin? Or
any other person in our time who dissents from the truth or those who teach
God’s children to dissent from the truth.

If the Church has not been under the constant
vigilant guidance of the Holy Spirit of Truth since day one and remain in the
Truth for every second, then Jesus is not the Lord of History, and if He is not
the Lord of History, He is not the Lord. Although Jesus did say He came to
bring not peace, but the sword of division, we know that the division He speaks
of refers not to the Church, but to the separation between the Church and the
world. Jesus makes clear that being sanctified in the truth is to be one, as
the Father and He are one. Truth and unity go together: there will be one flock
and one shepherd (John 10:16). Lies, dissent, disobedience and disunity all go
together – all are a product of the Father of Lies. Dissenters are not new.
They have been with the Church since the beginning. One of their deceptions is
that they teach that it is ok to dissent from the teachings of the church or
that we are required to dissent.

St. Paul remarked on the
connec­tion between false teaching and disunity at the very beginning of the
Church: "I hear that there are divisions among you; and I partly believe
it, for there must be factions among you so that those who are genuine among
you may be recognized" (1 Cor. 11:18-19).

What does St. Paul mean
when he says the genuine ones? Who are these "genuine" ones? They are
the ones in possession of the truth. And how may we recognize them? They are
those who obey the teaching of the apostles, chief of whom is Peter, and their
successors, the bishops, chief of whom is the pope.

Vatican II’s Document
Lumen Gentium teaches us this :

“Fully incorporated into
the Church are those who, possessing the Spirit of Christ, accept all the means
of salvation given to the Church together with her entire organization, and who
– by the bonds instituted by the profession of faith, the sacraments,
ecclesiastical government, and communion – are joined in the visible structure
of the Church of Christ, who rules her through the Supreme Pontiff and the
Bishops”.

And why do these genuine
ones, that is Catholics who are in full communion, freely give their obedience?
Full communion means those who fully accept all that the Church teaches. They
give their obedience because Jesus is God the Son and He really did what He
said He would do: estab­lish his Church on Peter the Rock, and send us the Holy
Spirit of Truth to lead the Church into the fullness of truth and protect and preserve her from the Father of Lies.

Therefore just as there
are always those who dissent and those who teach dissent there will also always
be some who have the fullness of truth and who listen and obey their shepherd for
if the sheep can't tell who is teaching the truth, the flock is lost. You can't
be just a little bit pregnant. You are either pregnant or you are not. And if the
Catholic Church is really the Church established by Jesus who really is Lord, it
can't just possess a bit of the truth. It either has all the truth or it does
not. When it comes to faith and morals the Catholic Church cannot be right on
some things and wrong on others.

Truth is not divisible. It
cannot True and False at the same time. Therefore if the Catholic Church is the
one true church established by Jesus Christ as we proudly profess when we say
the Apostle’s Creed – if the Catholic Church is the Church of Jesus Christ who
is it’s head and who protects it from the Father of Lies - then it must always
be in possession of the fullness of truth and always teach the truth. If Jesus
is Lord, meaning really and truly divine, then everything else follows: the
infallibility of the Church, the inerrancy of Scripture, the ex opere operatoreality of the sacraments, the papacy, the
authority of the church to teach the truth, the doctrine of purgatory, Humane
Vitae, the Sanctity of Marriage between one man and one woman, the evil of
pornography, the evil of homosexual acts, the evil of abortion and euthanasia, the
necessity of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, Christ’s real presence in the
Eucharist, the dogmas concern­ing the Blessed Virgin Mary, "all the
truth." Not just part of it.

Since Jesus is the Lord
of History, all this truth has come in time, step by step, as the Holy Spirit
of Truth has led the Church into the full­ness of truth. So the Church
established by Jesus cannot go "off the tracks" of the truth, not
with the Holy Spirit as its guide, not ever – not for one second. It is one
thing to reject the divinity of Jesus, a truth available only to those who have
been given the faith by their Heavenly Father. It is another thing entirely to
accept the divinity of Jesus but then at the same time to reject the authority
of His one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church and the Vicar of Christ on
earth – the Holy Father – Our Pope. The
person who does this needs to go back and reread the New Testament, and
consider what it really means to say that Jesus is Lord, that the enemy is the
Father of Lies and that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth.

Catholics believe it to mean
that Jesus, at every moment throughout these last 2000 years, has always had
what it takes to pro­tect his Bride, from her beginning at Pentecost until her
Lord returns in glory. He has said that He will be with us until the end of
time and He has done so. As Catholics we are called to be defenders of the
truth. This means opposing those who are advocates of the Father of Lies. As
Catholics we have been given the immense privilege of belonging to Christ’s
Mystical body, of having the one true faith and through it knowing the sure
means of salvation and holiness.

But as today’s
Gospel directs us, we were not given the
fullness of truth to keep it to ourselves alone – each one of us has been given
the great commission – we have been sent to spread the truth of our faith to all
peoples. We are directed to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and Lo, I am
with you always, to the close of the age.”

My friends, Look up!
There is your desired goal ascending to sit at the right hand of His Father. It
is a goal which neither poverty, nor hardships, nor death itself can keep you.
Follow the truth. The Holy Spirit will assist you. For the treasures that are
laid up for you are worth any cost. Follow the truth for the eye has not seen,
nor the ear heard, nor has it even entered into the hearts of men what God has
prepared for those who love Him. Christ has ascended to lay up a treasure for
you. If you are a doubter, Christ’s ascension is a final proof of His divinity.
If you are among the weak, Christ ascended to send the Holy Spirit to
strengthen and confirm you. If you are a sinner, Christ is your advocate
pleading for your forgiveness before his Father.

As we believe so shall
we teach – let us therefore teach the truth – and the truth will set us free.

Saturday, May 09, 2015

Philip went down to the city of Samariaand proclaimed the
Christ to them.With one accord, the crowds
paid attention to what was said by Philipwhen
they heard it and saw the signs he was doing.For unclean spirits, crying out in a loud voice,came out of many possessed people,and many paralyzed or crippled people were cured.There was great joy in that city.Now when the apostles in Jerusalemheard that Samaria had accepted the word of God,they sent them Peter and John,who went down and prayed for them,that they might receive the Holy Spirit,for it had not yet fallen upon any of them;they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord
Jesus.Then they laid hands on themand they received the Holy Spirit.

Beloved:Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.Always be ready to give an explanationto anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope,but do it with gentleness and reverence, keeping
your conscience clear,so that, when you
are maligned,those who defame your good
conduct in Christmay themselves be put to
shame.For it is better to suffer for doing
good,if that be the will of God, than for
doing evil. For Christ also suffered for sins once,the righteous for the sake of the unrighteous,that he might lead you to God.Put to death in the flesh,he was brought to life in the Spirit.

Jesus said to his disciples:“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.And I will ask
the Father,and he will give you another Advocate to be with you
always,the Spirit of truth, whom the world
cannot accept,because it neither sees
nor knows him.But you know him, because he
remains with you,and will be in you.I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.In a little while the world will no longer see me,but you will see me, because I live and you will
live.On that day you will realize that I
am in my Fatherand you are in me and I in
you.Whoever has my commandments and
observes themis the one who loves me.And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father,and I will love him and reveal myself to him.”

Consistency, integrity or contradiction?

“If you love me,
you will keep my commandments.”

“I will ask the
Father,and he will give you
another Advocate to be with you always,the Spirit of truth”

In
today’s Gospel Jesus is talking about two the most fundamental concepts of our
life: the love and the truth. In our multicultural and tolerant world both: and
love and truth are not only misused but abused and denied. Instead of love we
have sex and pornography, instead of truth we are proposed relativism and
falsely understood tolerance, where everybody has his own private truth.

And
so we can ask a legitimate question: “What is love? What does it mean to love?”
Jesus is answering it in the most direct and clearest way: “If you love me, you will keep my
commandments.” And so we can continue to question further: “What
are the commandments I should keep?” This question was already asked in
the Gospel by a young rich man who would like to be a disciple of Christ. (Mk
10:17-20)

Young
rich man asked "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal
life?" Jesus answered him: “You know the commandments: 'Do not murder, do
not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud,
honor your father and mother.”

Am
I able to say together with this young man: “Teacher, all these I have kept
since I was a boy." If not why do I say that I love God?

During
his last visit in USA Pope Benedict XVI said:

While it is true that this continent is marked by a genuinely
religious spirit, the subtle influence of secularism can nevertheless color the
way people allow their faith to influence their behavior.

ÞIs it consistent to profess our beliefs in church on Sunday, and then during the
week to promote business practices or medical procedures contrary to those
beliefs?

ÞIs it consistent for practicing Catholics to ignore or exploit the poor and the
marginalized, to promote sexual behavior contrary to Catholic moral teaching,
or to adopt positions that contradict the right to life of every human being
from conception to natural death?

ÞAny tendency to treat
religion as a private matter must be resisted.Only when their faith permeates every aspect of their
lives do Christians become truly open to the transforming power of the Gospel
(…)

ÞHow can we not be saddened as we observe the sharp decline of the family as a basic element
of Church and society?

ÞDivorce and infidelity have increased, and many young men and women are choosing to
postpone marriage or to forego it altogether.

ÞTo some Catholics, the
sacramental bond of marriage seems scarcely distinguishable from a civil bond, or even a purely
informal and open-ended arrangement to live with another person.

ÞHence we have an alarming decrease in the number of
Catholic marriages in theNorth
America together with an increase in cohabitation, in which the Christ-like
mutual self-giving love (..) is simply absent.

In
such circumstances, a deep reflection is arising: “Is my life consistent and integral or rather contradictory? I pretend
to love Jesus, but do I keep also His commandments?”

And the second concept of today’s Gospel,
the concept of truth.

ÞWhat does it mean that the Father will send us the Spirit of truth?

ÞWe are afraid of the truth.

ÞFor many of the contemporary Catholics the truth is very
inconvenient, awkward, problematic and tiresome.

Especially
if this truth is not going together with my wishes and desires.

Today many live without belief in the existence of truth. Some use the word
without understanding its authentic meaning, as if it can denote only a personal opinion, a thing that is
"true" only for the individual who holds that idea. This widespread
relativism, the system of thought which refuses to affirm that any one idea or
law can apply to all persons, is "true", has crept with increasing
power like an infection into the body of the Church.

The
Church cannot be the Body of Christ unless the Church leads us into all the
truth, for Christ is the Truth. The Church cannot teach the truth without the
indwelling power of the Holy Spirit of truth, for the human members of the
Church are incapable of grasping and remaining faithful to the Word of truth without
divine grace. The Lord promised the gift
of the Holy Spirit so that man might persevere in the truth and so be
saved.

To
love Jesus means to trust him. And that means that we trust his radical teaching about an ideal of unselfish love with
all –even the most difficult- consequences off this love.

Jesus
knows that his teaching seems unpromising and so he sends to those who try to
be unselfish an Advocate who is the "Spirit
of truth." This divine Spirit will be present to our inmost being and
will assure us that the path traced out by Jesus will in fact lead to freedom and joy. This powerful Spirit
will also guide us in knowing how to love properly in all the circumstances of
our lives.But our obligation and our
deepest task is to not put the obstacles to the work of the Holy Spirit in our
lives.

How we can recognize that we have the Spirit of Christ and not the
spirit of the world?

But
the deeds of the flesh are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery,
hostility, conflicts, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions,
envying, drunkenness, egoism, and things like these, of which I warn you, as I warned you
before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God”
(Gal 5:19-23)

And
once again the same question is arising: “Is
my life consistent and integral or rather contradictory? I pretend to believe
Jesus, but do I live according to His Spirit of truth?”

Homily from Father Joseph Pellegrino http://www.st.ignatius.net/pastor.html 21 Ordinary Time Faith is a choice - Choices and the Onl...

Divine Mercy Chaplet

Opening PrayerYou expired, Jesus, but the source of life gushed for souls, and an ocean of mercy opened up for the whole world. O Fount of Life, unfathomable Divine Mercy, envelop the whole world and empty yourself out upon us.

O Blood and Water, which gushed forth from the Heart of Jesus as a fount of mercy for us. I trust in You!________________________________________1. Begin with the• Sign of the Cross,• 1 Our Father,• 1 Hail Mary• The Apostles Creed.

2. Then on the Our Father Beads say the following:Eternal Father, I offer You the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your dearly beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.

3. On the 10 Hail Mary Beads say the following:For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.(Repeat step 2 and 3 for all five decades).

4. Conclude with(three times):Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us and on the whole world.

Closing PrayerEternal God, in whom Mercy is endless and the treasury of compassion inexhaustible, look kindly upon us and increase Your mercy in us, that in difficult moments we might not despair nor become despondent, but with great confidence submit ourselves to Your Holy Will, which is Love and Mercy itself. Amen

Death sentence

Knights of Columbus Alberta

Join Us

Membership in the Knights of Columbus is open to men 18 years of age or older who are practical (that is, practicing) Catholics in union with the Holy See. This means that an applicant or member accepts the teaching authority of the Catholic Church on matters of faith and morals, aspires to live in accord with the precepts of the Catholic Church, and is in good standing in the Catholic Church.

New English translation of the Roman Missal

New English translation of the Missal

ABORTION

“I solemnly urge you:proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching.For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires,and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.” (2 Tim 4,1-5)

Stat4U

Search homilies

Wierzyć dzisiaj

How to pray

How to pray the Chaplet of The Divine Mercy:

1. Begin with the Sign of the Cross, 1 Our Father, 1 Hail Mary and The Apostles Creed.

2. Then on the Our Father Beads say the following:
Eternal Father, I offer You the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your dearly beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.

3. On the 10 Hail Mary Beads say the following:
For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.
(Repeat step 2 and 3 for all five decades).

4. Conclude with (three times):
Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us and on the whole world.

JESUS, WE TRUST IN YOU!

Optional Closing Prayer:

Eternal God, in whom mercy is endless and the treasury of compassion — inexhaustible, look kindly upon us and increase Your mercy in us, that in difficult moments we might not despair nor become despondent, but with great confidence submit ourselves to Your holy will, which is Love and Mercy itself.